


Bloody Hands

by AnonymityisCrucial



Series: Whumptober 2018 [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Difficult choices, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Gun Violence, Like a few shots, Whumptober 2018, but like, not heavily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymityisCrucial/pseuds/AnonymityisCrucial
Summary: Day 2: Bloody HandsA gun pressed to Riley's head causes Mac to have to make a difficult choice: Does he shoot the man or does he surrender, potentially getting them both killed in the process? And in the end, doesn't everybody feel like they have a little bit of blood on their hands?





	Bloody Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Another short written in a small amount of time with no editing. I apologize.

All he could do was stare at his hands. He had killed people, too many people, his hands stayed red. He tried to be as much a pacifist as he could in his life, whether it be talking bullies down instead of fighting (even if he got beat up quite often), or defusing bombs in an active war zone while taking heavy enemy fire (with him having tried many times to save as many people as he could, good or bad, innocent or guilty, because people don’t just deserve to die), or during his current job with Phoenix. He always tried to figure out the least lethal option to everything. There was never any situation where killing was necessary. Or, at least, that’s what he thought.

He hated guns, too, for many reasons. Too many cases of gun violence nowadays, and even back when he was a kid. Too much fire that he had to deal with overseas. Too many fire fights he was in now. It was just too much, but that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to shoot, nor did it mean he was a bad shot. In fact, he was pretty good, he just hated guns because they often lead to injury and death. There were too many factors that played into guns. Sometimes, though, exceptions had to be made.

It was a rare mission where Bozer and Riley were both in the field with Mac and Jack. They needed Riley to hack into a system, but it was only accessible from the inside, so she infiltrated with them, and Bozer joined in because there were two objectives. Mac and Riley would head to hack into the system while Bozer and Jack headed off to collect the other piece of information they needed, which was only kept as physical sheets of paper in the office of the head of the group.

Things went to plan as much as they do any other point in time. Mac had a stand-off with some security guards that were definitely hired guns while Riley worked on hacking, and Jack and Bozer were trying to get the keycard to the office, which was only on the head person, who they had to then find and figure out a way to get it off of him. Needless to say, one side had it a bit easier than the other.

“Riley! Is there anyway to speed this up? I’m running out of stuff to use,” Mac shouted behind him as he chucked his last flashbang. The server room was in the basement, inside of a Faraday cage to avoid outside influence, and beyond that cage were shelves of random things that Mac had used to cobble together some flashbangs and a few other toys. Using the broom-turned-staff as a weapon, he smack one of the guards over the head with enough force to knock him out. Unfortunately, the broom-staff broke into pieces. Fortunately, the piece Mac held in his hand still functioned as a non-lethal weapon.

Sadly, it was knocked away from his grip and he was kneed in the gut, sending him bending over. An elbow to the back sent him sprawling to the floor, breath knocked out of him. Crawling slightly, Mac reached for the unconscious body of a guard for anything that could be used as a weapon. Hands gripped the back of his shirt as his hand wrapped blindly around something, which he swung upwards and it cracked against the head of the guard attacking him, sending him to the floor. Standing, Mac looked at the weapon in his hands, a service rifle of sorts, semi-automatic, and shuddered inwardly. It was too similar to the weapons he was used to being shot at with while overseas, and also being forced to handle when he served. It brought back too many memories.

“Mac!”

Spinning around, Riley’s shout pulling him from his mind, Mac found himself facing another man holding Riley at gunpoint. His brain flew through all of the scenarios and outcomes that were all potentially possible. None of them ended well for either of them, mainly because the body language of the last guard revealed that he was not very stable, and probably wouldn’t hesitate to shoot Riley or Mac. The only way that everyone would end up alive was if Jack came in at the moment, but from Jack’s chatter over the coms before it was knocked from Mac’s ear, they were still on the other side of the building.

“Let her go,” Mac spoke softly, yet in a commanding tone, raising the gun.

“No way. You drop your weapon now or I shoot her.”

“Then I’ll shoot you and you don’t walk away from this. You can either let her go and walk out of here, or you can regret every decision that led you to this exact point in time,” Mac stated without any sort of emotion. His eyes flickered off the man and to Riley, who he saw looked concerned and worried, but whether that was for him or if it was because of the gun pressed against her head, Mac would prefer if it was just the latter and not the former. He didn’t needed anymore concerned looks directed his way. He’s had enough of those in his lifetime.

“Why should I believe that you’d just let me walk out of here? I might as well just shoot her, I don’t think you have the nerve to pull that trigger.” Mac’s eyebrows furrowed, eyes never leaving the guard as he audibly cocked the gun and moved his finger near, but not on, the trigger.

“Leave. Her. Alone,” Mac demanded. The man’s face turned red with anger. He was probably used to intimidation tactics working. Plus, if Mac read him right, if the blonde did put the gun down, Riley would still get shot, but so would he, and the man would leave, a job complete. This man was different from the other guards, possibly a personal friend of the head of security, or perhaps just a man who somehow infiltrated the group. The other guards were simply doing their jobs, but this man, he seemed to want to hurt. It frightened Mac, which is why his only options were to try to talk him down, or shoot him, and he was desperately hoping that the first one would work.

“I don’t think so kid. Put your gun down or she gets it.”

“You put your gun down or I swear I will shoot you.” Mac shifted his stance and took aim. The man fumed, and in a second of being blinded by anger, his gun shifted from Riley, finger twitching away from the trigger, and suddenly he was on the ground, two rounds in his chest. Mac lowered the gun, the weapon’s safety turned on before it slipped from his hands. He staggered over to Riley, who hugged him tightly, tears in her eyes. Mac couldn’t focus on anything, the world seemed muffled. He looked down slightly and saw the man, eyes still open, blood coating the floor around him. He was dead. Mac killed him. He just shot a man dead. What had he done?

“Oh my god, what did I do?” Mac started to hyperventilate and Riley quickly finished with her job, unplugging herself, and led Mac out of the room, away from all of the bodies, both alive and not, and helped him slowly sit down on the floor of the hallway, back leaning against the wall. “What did I do? Riles, I just, I killed him. I killed that man. He could have had a family, kids, people who depended on him.”

 

“He was not a nice man. If he did have a family, it's possible you might have done them a favor. He didn’t seem very stable.”

“He still didn’t deserve to die. I just shot him. Didn’t even think about it, just shot. I don’t know what happened. I’ve killed so many people, too many people have died because of me, and now I just killed him.” Mac ran his hands through his hair, pulling it tightly as he tried to catch his breath.

“You saved my life.” Mac stopped breathing for a moment, looking Riley in the eyes. She had crouched down beside him, a comforting hand on one of his bent knees, and was staring at him with gratitude. “You saved my life Mac is what you did, and if you hadn’t shot him, he’d have killed us both, or me. You did the right thing, even if a man did die.”

“But I should have aimed for a shoulder, or a leg, or something that wouldn’t have killed him. I killed him Riley, I did that. All me.” Riley grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him slightly, giving him a hard look.

“Mac, look at me alright. Sometimes, when people we care about are in danger, sometimes when we’re in danger, are brain doesn’t think through all of the things we could do instead, and it just focuses on how we can protect ourselves or others. You have time now to think about where you could have shot him, but that’s because it’s already happened. In the moment, what were you thinking?”

“How I could save you.”

“Exactly. You may have some blood on your hands, but you’ve saved countless lives Mac, mine included. Yes, you could have shot him somewhere else, or Macgyvered some other way, but those are what-ifs. In the moment, you wanted to save me, and you did just that. It’s not something you’ll get over, those shots, but I’m always here to help, and so are Jack and Boze and even Matty or Jill. We’re all here for you. Hell, we’ve probably all got some blood on our hands, whether or not it was actually our fault or if we just feel like it is. You saved my life, let me try to repay you.”

Mac swallowed harshly, throat dry, as his heavy breaths evened out to shaky, but steady ones. Riley stood and offered a hand, which the blonde accepted with a small smile on his face.

“You feeling a bit better?” Riley asked.

“Not really.”

“Oh.” Riley looked slightly uncomfortable so Mac elaborated.

“It’s still a bit too fresh in my mind for me to be even slightly okay, but knowing that you’re there for me makes helps me to know that I’ll, eventually, be alright, even with red hands.”

“Hey, remember what I said?” Mac furrowed his brows.

“Which part?”

“We all have a bit of blood on our hands.”

“Whether it’s our fault or we think it is.”

“Exactly. We’re all here.”

“Thank you.”


End file.
